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The Simple Smoke

Seasonally, like clothes, make-up changes. All of the high-end brands and now recently, the not-so high end brands have been releasing suitable make-up for the seasons. A classic that never seems to want to go away in the smokey eye. Done well and it is smouldering, sexy and should light up your peepers. Unfortunately, that’s not always the way it’s done. It can look cheap, too powerful and not very nice at all, if done badly.

Here’s a few hints for keeping it classy.

1. To pull off the smokey eye, you’ll need some well defined brows. It doesn’t look right if you don’t have them. Try using some brow powder, or if you don’t have that, try some matte eye shadow. Fill in your brows with little strokes and lengthen them at the end.

Smokey

2. I think doing the eyes first is the best way to work a smokey eye. If you do your foundation first there is always the fear that some of your lovely shadow will end up on your nose or on your cheeks.

3. Something I picked up from Ellie Balfe in her great course, was to use eyeliner as a base. So, what you do is, get your black eyeliner and scribble it all over your lid, up to your socket. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you’ll be blending it after. Get your finger and rub it over the liner until there are no gaps. This is your base.

Urban Decay 24/7 Liner in Zero

4. Get what ever shadow your using, dark and sparkly is what I like. Using a flat brush pat the colour over the shadow, using as much as you like to get it as dark as you want. You can add more dimensions to is using more shadows if you want using the same technique.

5. Using a fluffy blending brush, blend the shadow in, using window wiper motions until there are no harsh lines left.

MAC 217 blending brush

6. Using the same black eyeliner, line the upper and the lower water line. You can put a little shadow under the lower lashes to make it a bit more dramatic.

Application technique

7. Pile on the black mascara on upper and lower lashes

8. Give under your eyes a wipe to make sure there’s no nasty fall-out and use a light reflecting concealer to brighten up.